Sweet sweet all new Dr. Who.

All though I’m not entirely excited about this new companion of his - she’s obnoxious and “temperamental” (you are encouraged to think of other adjectives), but all in all, I’m glad to have the Doctor back.

A couple of weeks ago, I read about Charles Barber’s new book, Comfortably Numb in Wired, and it sounded intensely interesting. It’s due to come out this month, and I’ve reserved one of the first copies to come into Golden Public Library.

At any rate, I decided to pursue his other book, Songs From The Black Chair. Honestly, when I found (in the prologue) that this was a reference to Tears For Fear’s Songs From The Big Chair, I was turned off, but perhaps in the end it was relatively appropriate. Still, I felt like it was a stretch.

In terms of the meat of the book, rarely in my “adult life” have I been so floored by a book. I got the book last week, and read the prologue on Thursday night, but finished the rest of it on Sunday and today. When class let out this afternoon, I wasn’t thinking of coming home, having a beer and watching a TV show before starting homework. Instead, I was set on finishing up the home stretch of this book. The last time I read a book so quickly (for me, this is very fast) was Kurt Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. (I reread it for a scholarship essay I wrote; incidentally, I didn’t win the moneys.)

Reading this book was like reading about my friend and myself. At first, to the point that I felt completely and utterly involved, and then so much that it was eerie, and then at last to the point that I almost felt indignant about being very eloquently how I felt. I can’t very well articulate how much its reading has affected me.

Oddly enough, at certain points it made me give more credence to the whole anarchist nihilistic punk thing - a “thing” I always regarded as, well, silly. That’s certainly not to say I don’t love Fight Club or SLC Punk, but like Stevo said, he had given no thought to the future, and when the world didn’t end, he had to grow up.

“This is it, Joel,” Clementine said. “It’s going to be gone soon.” “I know.” “What do we do?” “Enjoy it. Say good-bye.”

I want to live in a world that, as it’s coming to an end, people aren’t running naked into the streets to get laid one last time, but are going to the beach and flying an airplane. Making shy conversation with that girl you saw from a distance.

The soundtrack is so moving, the cinematography so effective and the direction captures so well what it’s like to be dreaming. It’s all the excitement of infatuation and spending so much time with someone you love to the point that you can’t stand them, without all the crap associated with romantic movies. Joel only tells Clementine that he loves her once, and it’s not met with a love-struck gaze and reciprocation, but a caring “Meet me in Montauk.”

This is the kind of movie that I watch in my head over and over again as I listen to the soundtrack. When I watch it, I feel the absence. It’s not a sorrow, or happiness but a simple material existence - a mass passively partaking in the universe. I don’t have to think, feel, or even perceive, but am just a party to the world - a fly on the wall.

My first woot is just 25 miles away. I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground with their RSS feed for the last year or so (and seen a few woot-worthy - though, unfortunately they only ship to the States), but this is my first wooting. What is my first woot? A toy I don’t need, but I hope to have fun with - Roboquad.

Take a look at some of the videos you can find around the interwebs.

Incidentally, within a week, I’ve made my second wooting - this time a Roomba Discovery for my parents for Christmas. Shh - don’t tell them.

Update: My woot is on my doorstep. (10:08 11/16/07)

I just ran into one of Leopard’s “more than 300 new features.” I was wanting to move a plugin into an app’s plugin directory, but was told that I could not move it, as the directory was protected. I guess I’d just have to click Canc… wait. There’s another button off in the distance (well, right next to it). “Authenticate”? Let’s give that a go. It prompts me for a username and password, I fill them in and the magic happens. This is so awesome because it saves me from having to go into Terminal and sudo the command.

In celebration, enjoy xkcd’s remarks on sudo.

My younger sister is in her high school’s production of Elton John and Tim Rice’s Aida. For someone who doesn’t like theater as a medium, plays as a literary work, and holds a special loathing for scholastic performances like this, I was very impressed.

The plot was obvious, the writing tedious and seriously, who likes the musical numbers? But the singing (save the male lead) was incredible - it was hard to believe these voices were coming from high schoolers. The choreography was spectacular and the production value was unlike any other school production I’ve ever seen. The set was very complete and the costumes weren’t the get-your-mom-to-stitch-scraps-together attire I was expecting, but rather, stylish, neat and even provocotive.

As the forbidden love crescendos with the romantic leads sharing a kiss to fading lights, I was filled more than ever with cynicism. When the lights came back on and the lovers were still lip-locked, I felt the entirely unexpected hope that the two actors were, themselves, in love. I am still frustrated at being so taken with this medium I loathe so much.

I always thought that choir teachers and conductors were always trying to trick their audience (mostly parents and siblings - at least half of whom don’t want to be there) into getting emotionally caught up in the performance. If you were sappy enough to, they had won.

All in all, I can’t deny that tonight I bought into the cheese. I longed to be Aida’s forbidden love, and wished the heros well. But at least this cynic can find a very small consolation in the fact [SPOILER] that the lovers die in the end - buried alive for traitorous transgresions. Ah, l’amour.

Thanks to Wells Fargo’s promotion whereby opening a “College Combo” account with them gives the customer a voucher for 2 season passes for the price of one, I got my first season pass. I didn’t know anyone who would want a pass, and so I put an ad on Facebook and found someone almost immediately, and yesterday we went down to Christy Sports and bought our passes. I look forward to my first season in Colorado - if you want to go to Copper Mountain, Winter Park or Mary Jane, give me an email!

Boulder is its own kind of place. That’s not to say I don’t like it - there are certainly things to like about it, but its high pedestrian and bicyclist population makes me paranoid whenever I drive there.

By all means pedestrians should have the right of way in city limits on the road, but people in Boulder tend to bolt out onto the street with complete disregard for traffic. Ack.

At any rate, I was reading on Wired about Virgin rating the 11 most bike-friendly cities in the world, and I felt a hint of a tinge of pride at the fact that Boulder, CO appeared fourth on the list. Go hippies.

I am actually writing this post from my Nintendo DS. Though I originally got the DS to use with a Kanji dictionary cartridge, since I had it laying around, I thought I’d drop the $30 to let me surf the net with it. That said, I had heard mixed reviews about the Opera web browser for DS, but most complaints were from people looking to play Flash games on the ‘net or people expecting Firefox on something like this.

Although it doesn’t boast the fastest browsing around, I’m liking it very much so far. Late nights in bed trying to recall the details of the Ford-Fulkerson algorithm can be settled earlier with a bedside visit to Wikipedia from my new toy. I envision myself taking this places where I don’t want to lug around a laptop (read: coffee shops), but I may have to look something up on Google or Wikipedia to verify a friendly bet.

It is, however, a little cumbersome to write a post or e-mail like this.

Addendum: I thought it might be useful to show some sites with which I’ve had success, and which ones flounder.

Facebook - yes; little finnicky Gmail - yes; no hitches Google Reader - not yet; trying to tweak Meebo - no; definite no Lifehacker - yes; looks good, too Wired - yes; slow to open, though Google Search - yes Google Maps - no :-( Instructables - no Yahoo Maps - yes; I miss Google

I read about ZipSkinny.com on Lifehacker a couple of days ago, and it’s actually pretty neat. I never knew how white, educated, upper-middle-class middle-aged parent-like my community was. How did it escape my attention?

Still, I do get a certain amount of pride from the education level of Colorado, and especially the Boulder area. Culture is just dripping from every hemp messenger bag and Birkenstock sandal in Boulder proper.